You know, I'm not one of those people who automatically hate the idea of remaking old movies. Sure, they're almost always bad, but once in awhile, an adept filmmaker can find some modern resonance in something from the past, as David Cronenberg did with The Fly and John Carpenter did so memorably with The Thing. I wasn't a huge fan of Jonathan Demme's redo of The Manchurian Candidate, but I understand why he did it, and it seems even more chilling in the age of Sarah Palin.
But now comes the news that The Hills star Audrina Patridge will be appearing in a remake of the '83 slasher epic The House On Sorority Row. Let me rephrase that: The vapid co-star of one of the most useless reality shows in TV history will be given a chance to "act" in a reworking of a movie that was itself one of the most instantly forgettable entries in the early eighties slasher movie craze, not a terribly distinguished genre to begin with.
Obviously, remaking this crummy movie hardly qualifies as violating the memory of a beloved classic. The question is, given the threadbare premise--a bunch of sorority babes are being murdered one by one--why even call it a remake? Why not just make an original movie based on this same incredibly tired idea? Or is there actually a rule now that every movie has to be a remake of something?
